How to send files back to TC from external hard drive quickly?

Question

Hi,
I have just archived 500gb of my TC to external hard drive which was directly connected to TC. I have replaced failing hard drive in TC on 2GB (£50) and reformated gain. Now is ready to be used. Then I wanted to put archive files back onto TC from that external hard drive which is directly connected to TC. The problem is that when I was archiving it files where send directly from TC to external hard drive and it took approximately 5 hours to do it. Now to reverse all that taking about 5 days because for some stupid reason hard drive is sending all that files through my desktop and back to TC again.
Is there any faster way to do it?

Answer 1

A: you DONT modify your TM backup, youd just add files into the same HD, however thats no good because........
Youre trying to create a nasty choke point for data failure by putting time machine AND your files on ONE DRIVE,
very bad idea,   hard drives are cheap as dirt, buy another,  2 MINIMUM external redundant backups of your vital data, period.
also,  cloud isnt a place for data archives, and not safe, not secure.
The Tragedy that will be, the tragedy that never should be
Always presume correctly that your data is priceless and takes a very long time to create and often is irreplaceable. Always presume accurately that hard drives are extremely cheap, and you have no excuse not to have multiple redundant copies of your data copied on hard drives and squirreled away several places, lockboxes, safes, fireboxes, offsite and otherwise.
Hard drives aren't prone to failure…hard drives are guaranteed to fail (the very same is true of SSD). Hard drives dont die when aged, hard drives die at any age, and peak in death when young and slowly increase in risk as they age.
Never practice at any time for any reason the false premise and unreal sense of security in thinking your data is safe on any single external hard drive. This is never the case and has proven to be the single most common horrible tragedy of data loss that exists.
Many 100s of millions of hours of lost work and data are lost each year due to this single common false security. This is an unnatural disaster that can avoid by making all data redundant and then redundant again. If you let a $60 additional redundant hard drive and 3 hours of copying stand between you and years of work, then you've made a fundamental mistake countless 1000s of people each year have come to regret.